Overview

Introduction

Splodey! is a fast paced game of light-hearted destruction, played entirely with your pointer finger. The goal is to “splode” (explode) colored blocks on a playing field. Drag your pointer finger across the screen to launch balls at blocks. The direction of the ball is the same as your finger motion and the speed of the ball depends on how fast you drag your finger before lifting it.

The color of the ball is determined by how far you drag your finger before lifting it to launch it. The color is chosen from the same colors represented by blocks on the playing field. Balls only splode blocks with the same color, so a blue ball will only splode a blue block. Power-ups can change this rule, however. Shaking the phone gets the balls excited… doubling their speed, reversing their direction, and imparting a random kick.

Game Screen

When you start the game, you are presented with two opening screens. The first screen displays the current level number, the number of colors which will be used during in this level (up to 9, which is quite difficult), and the time you will be given to finish the level. The second screen tells you how many blocks you will need to splode before time runs out.

The main game screen is shown below:

At the top of the screen you’ll see two bars as shown in the following image. One bar shows the time you’ve taken playing the level and the other shows how many blocks you’ve sploded. You want the blocks bar to fill up completely before the time bar does (or the game ends). So when playing, make sure you keep an eye on the progress bars.

In the top-right corner of the screen is a splodey ball which slowly rotates as the game progresses. The color of the ball changes as you slide your finger across the screen… this is the color of the ball which will be launched. If you have a situation where most of the blocks are a single color, you can “lock” the current color by tapping the rotating ball. A ring will appear around the ball when it is locked. You can unlock the color by tapping the ball again.

The middle of the screen is the active play area, where you’ll drag your finger to splode blocks.

At the bottom of the screen the score is displayed on the left and the current game level on the right. When a power-up is active, it will be displayed between the score and level at the bottom.

Phone Controls

The phone controls work as follows:

• Home Button: Pauses Splodey! and takes you to your phone’s home screen.
• Menu Button: Pauses Splodey!. Press menu again to restart play.
• Quit Button: Brings up a menu presenting options to quit or continue playing. If you quit, you’ll get the option to submit your score to the high-score lists.
• Search Button: Does nothing.
• Sound Rocker: The rocker is used to change the volume of music and sound effects.
• Tilt: Ball movement is influenced by the tilt of the phone. You can change the sensitivity (and even disable this) in the Options screen.
• Shake: When the phone is shaken, balls speed up and change direction. Stationary balls will gain some momentum.

Scoring

Scoring is uncomplicated.

• Blocks Sploded: You get 10 points per block sploded times the level number. So 80 blocks sploded on level 4 is 10 * 80 * 4 = 3200 points.
• Time Bonus: If you beat the time goal, you get 10 points per second remaining times the level number. So 10.2 seconds left on level 5 is 10 * 10.2 * 5 = 510 points.

Power ups

Power-ups are special, temporary powers granted to you for achieving a goal while playing. When a power-up is granted, a special sound will play and a power-up indicator will appear at the bottom of the screen. It will flash faster and faster as it “wears out” until it finally disappears and the power-up is gone.

• Blaster Ball empowers the ball to “blow through” blocks, rather than bouncing. Can be used to clear adjacent blocks of the same color rapidly.
• Rainbow Ball empowers the ball to blow up blocks of any color.
• Multi Ball fires three balls of the same color in a fan pattern. Very powerful!
• Splode Finger empowers your pointer finger with the power to splode blocks just by touching the blocks!